Traceability of elastic parameters in elastography — A feasibility study

Elastography is a developing imaging modality which can obtain the elastic property of the soft tissue. For its great potential clinical value, many elastographic algorithms and systems are developed by research groups and then applied in the clinical cases. In elastography, the Young's modulus is the instinct quantity of the soft tissue and the corresponding parameters are expected to be traceable to the standard quantity. This process is the verification /calibration and is the need of the quality control. This paper attempted to simulate the transfer standards and study the feasibility of metrology in elastography. Several standard phantoms with known elastic properties were established as transfer standards, then the elastograms were obtained by certain imaging algorithm. The elastic quantity was extracted from the elastogram and then compared with the standard value. The results showed that 1D (layered structure) model had the better contrast transfer efficiency than the 2D model, and the former might be an appropriate structure for the standard phantom used for quantity transfer in metrology.